Frantz Fanon was perhaps the seminal theoretician of postcolonial politics, culture and identity; his two major books, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), have been widely read and have provided an important inspiration for liberation movements around the world. Born in Martinique, Fanon studied medicine in Paris and became a psychiatrist in Algeria during its wars of liberation from France. 'The Fact of Blackness' is Fanon's celebrated essay describing the consciousness of the 'black' subject in a world of 'white' power.